#lcfthaunted

  The late afternoon has hit its usual lull. Most of the Haven has spread out, retreating from the sun and each other and all other sources of heat as the temperature hits it peak for the day. Those who aren't asleep outright are at rest. Low demand tasks. Quiet hobbies. Tech has traded the usual mechanical nature of the fidget in her fingers for a paper fortune teller. Swish swish swish, the rainbow insides alternate places as she opens and closes it, kaleidoscopic.

  Mazie is the latest in her wandering tour of those-not-claimed-by-afternoon-naps. Popping into doorways and holding out the teller with an insistence bordering both petulance and threat. Play with me.

“Can I come in?”

  This late in the evening, the little unit is softly dark. Lit, only, by the strident flicker of one of the pale orange candles set on the dresser. Newly lit it seems - she's still in the process. Des turns as the question floats in from the hallway, surprise lifting her eyes. But—-

Lamp. Nightstand. ... Bookcase. Too-soft pillow, and too-nice sheets. Richie catalogs his surroundings as sleep bleeds into wakefulness in a way he doesn't quite recognize. He's... home. Leave. Right, okay. It explains the absence of another body in this too-large bed, at least.

Nightmare? Something sits uncomfortably between his lungs and his rib cage, but not so acutely to immediately confirm the guess. Maybe? He rolls off his back and up to sit on the edge of the bed, damp sheets clinging uncomfortably to him as he goes.

'time is it? He glances to the nightstand, but the alarm clock's not angled quite right for him to see it's glaring green numbers immediately. Green? ... Red? It feels.. off, here. Quiet?

Richie reaches up to scrub his hands over his face. 'fuck's he doing? Should go back to bed. Should go back to base. God.

He stands up, instead, and his legs carry him out into the hall. Well. Not a hall, really, is it? Just a wide open space, cloaked heavily in the dark of night.

" this cafe is lovely. is there anything in particular that you might recommend, miss ? " yes, it's probably due time he left the choosing up to someone else and tried something new.

This was a terrible idea.

There were no two ways about it. Was she out of her mind?

Sorcha checked the time on her phone again. Exactly two minutes later than it had been two minutes before, the last time she’d checked, imagine that. She let the screen go black even as she stared at the digital numbers, and did her best not to fidget with the device.

“Excuse me,” a voice over her shoulder said.

Her head snapped up and she turned towards the sound, but it was only a father trying to get past her with an oversized stroller. She stepped aside. “Of course, sorry,” she said with a small smile.

She looked at her phone again (a whole 60 seconds had gone by), mostly checking for a notification this time. Despite how well the last few weeks had been going, she still half expected him to cancel.

That train of thought only brought her back around to the fact that this might be the worst idea she’d ever had. Tapping on the ad for the app had been bad enough, but this? She sighed and unlocked her phone, opening the conversation tab of the app and scrolling back to the very beginning. Maybe rereading some of their conversation would remind her why exactly she’d thought this was a good idea in the first place.

She smiled to herself. Neither of them had been comfortable when they’d first started talking, and looking back at it now, it practically radiated off the text. She could remember how it had felt. Online dating had never really been something she thought she’d ever do. After all, most apps of the sort seemed geared only towards hooking up and, well.

She could find someone for that just fine on her own, thank you very much.

Something about the ad for this app, however, had grabbed her attention. It advertised real connections over hookup culture. Given that she’d had maybe one connection she’d actually thought was real in her entire life, it appealed to her. Something deeper than a one night stand or a short-lived friends with benefits sounded really good, actually. So she’d tapped through, installed the app, built herself a profile. The fact that they discouraged sharing photos was a new one, but she found it almost refreshing, somehow.

Put simply, she was used to being able to draw people in based on her looks. Sure, she had the intellect and the conversation skills to go along with her body and her face, but intellect and conversation skills had rarely been more than icing on the cake. In truth, the idea of trying to build any kind of connection based on nothing more than black and white text? Mildly terrifying. Not that she’d admit that, even if pressed.

She swiped through the conversation on her screen, skimming over the majority of their conversation until she landed at the plans they’d made for that day.

gildedlily21: I’ll be in the northwest end of the food court, red sweater.

mjrnchurch: I’ll keep an eye out.

gildedlily21: ;)

So here she was. Standing there, red sweater and all, waiting for someone she’d never seen before in her life. What could possibly go wrong?

Another voice spoke behind her. “Excuse me… I’m looking for someone who calls herself gildedlily21, I’m supposed to meet her here.”

rp positivity meme.

@lcfthaunted //> Exhaustion...

“You look like you haven’t slept in days.” carefully dry, to make it sound like light teasing instead of genuine worry, but there's no hiding the concern in her eyes.

  “Footprints at the corners of your eyes,” Tech mumbles. Her little corner of the Haven is in even more disarray than usual, less Magpie's nest and more hazardous dumping ground. All her odd ends out, like she's been looking for something and not having much success. Still, she moves through it like a secret in an empty hallway. Touching nothing but air. Careful, oh so cautious of being overhead, steady on. She plucks something up off of the shelf in the back corner and whispers. Completely unintelligible. She freezes there, her little face upturned slightly to look at the empty space in front of her. Her eyes dart, her lips move. There's no sound, but it's clear: counting. Sums on an invisible scratchpad. Whatever the equation, she clucks her tongue. “Wings.” Insultory.

  Tech skips forward, meeting Mazie in the doorway to her unit. (Perpetually propped open. Never ever, never closed. Not allowed.) She's only just arrived —-zipped right past the office and the others and even her brother-— still sandy and a bit sun-touched, her shoulders and cheeks peachy, but: “Gotta run.” She handles the thing she pulled off of her shelf forward. It's around eight-tenths of functional transmitter. No case as yet, but the signal hosts and the storage and the screen are all there. Even the wiring is nicely bundled and arrayed, held in by proper brackets and steady lines of strong, neat solder. Tech pulls on Mazie's hands with quick, insistent fingers to place the device in them directly. She closes her own hands over it like a protective shell. The case it doesn't have, “Yet.”

  She blinks.

  Shakes her head lightly. The shadows around her eyes stay, of course, but for the moment her eyes are a little clearer. “You gotta trust it, if y'wanna keep it. Tell Jack...” She has to think about it. Biting her lips for a long second as her eyes skip aside, thinking. Oh. Of course. “Myth's end.”

“I will ruin him. Please don't let me do that.”

  Diana's initial answer is a softly stunned silence and the arch of her brow. Just the one, the other fixed more rightly in a level. Her hands fall on her hips, her weight all to her left leg. Leaning, easy. With her hair pulled away from her face, her eyes are clear and steady in the garden's dappled light. Icy blue piercing through the half shadow and the doubt.